The Perverts Guide to Cinema (2009), however, had nothing to do with porn or, at least, not that sort of porn…just the sort you see every day and don’t recognise it as such. This film was actually a philosophy of art lecture by Slavoj Zizek and at the same time that it was enlightening it was actually very funny. Well worth the time involved (and even better than its sequel, The Perverts Guide to Ideology, which we saw a couple of years ago and got a lot of good tips on other movies to seek out or re-watch with a new perspective).

How I Live Now (2013) was an apocalyptic tale set in England with a selfish and self-obsessed American teenager (are there any other kind?) finding out her strengths as war comes to her cousins’ land. This one can be harrowing in places but it was really more of a teen picture than we thought it was going to be when we started up the DVD.

More conventionally — and Biblically — apocalyptic, This Is The End (2013) was just good, stoner fun although a bit too long (could have easily been 1 hour or, at most, chopped into 6 half hours with commercials). It was especially nice watching all these celebrities playing off their perceived public personae (or completely warping it) … except Danny McBride: I think that really is him and they may not have even told him a film was being made, just put him on the set and filmed what happens (this has always been my theory of Three Stooges films — “no boys, you’re not plumbers, you’re Romans; just ignore those cameras, whydontya?).

Ian was one of the main subjects who DIDN’T make an appearance in the film

24 Hour Party People (2002) was especially good watching for faces we recognise because actual members of the bands (as well as other personages) portrayed were cast in bit parts throughout the film. Good film overall, too, but then we spent the next 6 hours watching YouTube clips of So It Goes, a music showcase from the late ’70’s presented by the movie’s main subject, Tony Wilson.

So, the 2nd half of the January film binge was mostly ensemble and end-of-the-world pictures. And, we finished Season 2 of Californication.